Французская живопись

Рене Магритт

"Rene Magritte was no doubt
disappointed that, aside from the small circle of his kindred
spirits among the Surrealists, the world needed over a quarter of a
century to discover that his work has both philosophical and poetic
content which corresponds to certain social and intellectual trends,
particularly of the second half of the twentieth century. Magritte's
work was not easy to approach at the outset, however. He is a
difficult painter, and his simplicity is misleading. A world ever
more disturbed and unstable - in labor, trade, and industry, as well
as in intellectual and university circles - is a world in which
reason remains indispensable. Yet the irrational no longer allows
itself to be thrust aside, and today it is struggling to win
recognition. As a result, there is now a greater possibility,
especially among the younger generation, to arrive at a better and
deeper understanding of Magritte's art.
"His work makes a constant call on us to relinquish, at least
temporarily, our usual expectations of art. Magritte never responds
to our demands and expectations. He offers us something else
instead. His friend Paul Nouge has expressed the problem better than
anyone else; what he said in 1944 still holds good: "We question
pictures," he said, "before listening to them, we question them at
random. And we are astonished when the reply we had expected is not
forthcoming.""Magritte's work allows one
to conjure up a state of being which has become rare and precious -
which makes it possible to observe in silence. Reading and
reflection call for silence, listening no less. Silence can be used
for waiting for an illumined vision of things, and it is to this
vision that Magritte introduces us...."The fascinating and
challenging images in Magritte's works stem from revelations of the
mystery of the visible world. To him this world was a more than
adequate source of lucid revelations, so that he did not need to
draw on dreams, hallucinations, occult phenomena, cabalism.
Nonetheless, preconsciousness - that is, the state before and during
waking up - always played an important role in his work.
"In studying Magritte one begins to understand that attempting to
solve puzzles must be avoided but the artist himself provides clues
to his manner of painting and the mental process on which it is
founded. Some are inclined to call this process "visual thinking. I
prefer to give it no name. The term "visual thinking" is not subtle
enough and involves too many misunderstandings regarding the
possible subordination of the visual to thought, or vice versa. The
misunderstanding caused by calling Magritte "cerebral" has also been
demonstrated all too often, despite the unusually large quantity of
literary, philosophical, and linguistic affinities Magritte's work
suggests, and which bring us closer to their meaning. Also the term
"literary" is a misconception in his case, although it is
understandable because of the literary origins of the leading
figures in Surrealism. Let us refrain, then, from favoring one
formula or the other and instead take a frank look to see with whom,
and with what, Magritte and his marvelous cabinet of instruments can
be compared.